Original author: Andy Yee, Fellow, CryoDAO Compiler: LlamaC
(Portfolio: Burning Man 2016, About Tomo: eth Foundation Illustrator)
"Recommended message: The article describes CryoDAO specific projects and achievements, including building infrastructure, raising funds, and advancing scientific research, and how these efforts contribute to the vision of an interstellar future and immortality. ”
Decentralized science is breaking the stagnation of science and leading a new era of human progress. Guided by the philosophy of cosmism, now is the time to boldly pursue our goal: to transcend death and expand into the universe. CryoDAO is leading the journey towards cosmic realization and consciousness awakening, bringing us closer to the moral realm of interstellar immortality.
TextResearch on the long-term development trajectory of human civilization usually places the future of mankind under several scenarios. Philosopher Nick Bostrom summarizes these four scenarios as extinction, cyclical collapse, stagnation, and posthumanity. Recently, an interdisciplinary research team formally divided these trajectories into four broad categories: status quo, catastrophe, technological change, and astronomy. In his book Future Stories, historian David Christian labels the future global scenarios we imagine as collapse, drawdown, sustainability, and growth.
Whatever terminology is used, we can draw some common conclusions from these studies. First, it seems impossible to maintain the status quo or steady trajectory, a situation in which the degree of civilization will be limited to a narrow range. Instead, civilizations are likely to either become extinct or transform, for the simple reason that the cumulative probabilities of these scenarios increase monotonically over time and will eventually break out of this range. However, our survival in the distant future through transformative technology or cosmic expansion is not a sure thing. The prevalence of major extinction events in Earth's history, coupled with our current technological capabilities to cause serious environmental and social harm, suggests that catastrophic trajectories are more likely.
Stagnation of scientific progress
In fact, humanity may already be at a point where it is capable of complete self-destruction technological level, whether through nuclear warfare or artificial intelligence (AI), but never reached the technological maturity required to realize a posthuman or interstellar future. We are still far from becoming a technologically mature civilization in which members can be biomodified to live extremely long and fulfilling lives or participate in space colonization. Worse, scientific inertia has been a defining feature of our society since the mid-20th century. The epochal technological advances of the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century in fields as diverse as automobiles, energy, materials science, and communications transformed our society from "an animal-driven, low-quality civilization to an electrified, mechanized, high-quality civilization."
In fact, a recent paper published in the journal Nature reveals a clear downward trend in disruptive science and technology over the past six decades , fueling concerns about a slowdown in innovation activity. This is partly because scientists focus too narrowly on their own areas of knowledge and lack the larger ambition to advance science as a whole. As Peter Thiel and science fiction writer Liu Cixin, among others, have pointed out, recent advances in information technology have only created the illusion of rapid progress. These advances simply made our society function more efficiently, but did not change the material or energy basis of civilization itself.
We cannot become complacent. For the first time in Earth's history, humans have developed the technological capabilities to manage the Earth on a planetary scale, both in terms of atmospheric composition and geographical features. David Christian calls this new complex entity "a managed or conscious planet." We may be on the verge of overcoming the "Great Filter," a concept used to explain the Fermi Paradox, which refers to the insurmountable challenge that prevents intelligent civilization from spreading across the universe. As long as we don't destroy ourselves before we become a space-faring civilization, and we are determined to acquire the technology we need, we have reason to be hopeful about our astronomical future.
Achieving this feat requires a transcendent goal that inspires society for decades or even centuries to invest in and make breakthroughs in many scientific and A stagnation has developed in the technological field. The history of our species is the history of the expansion of life and intelligence in space and time, as we occupy the Earth and live longer. So it's only natural that we build on this legacy by imagining boldly: expansion into the universe and beyond death. Only through such ambition can we ignite new social forces and direct sufficient resources to achieve the technological breakthroughs needed to accomplish this transcendent goal.
Reinvigorating our cosmic ambitions
We already have a solution to this problemplan. At the beginning of the 21st century, American sociologist William Bainbridge proposed creating a galaxy—a cosmic order—that could condense such demanding social movements. Through the idea that heaven is a divine realm into which we should enter to transcend death, people will see the meaning of life in the context of the universe and believe that this can be achieved through science and technology. This perspective has deeper roots in cosmism, a Russian philosophical and spiritual movement at the turn of the 20th century that explored our place in the universe, immortality, and resurrection. The cosmist movement, which sought to use science to expand humanity's current limitations of space and time, inspired the Soviet space program and led directly to contemporary transhumanism. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a follower of cosmism and the father of astronautics, once famously said: "The Earth is the cradle of mankind, but mankind cannot remain in the cradle forever."
Tsiolkovsky's mentor, the Christian philosopher Nikolay Fedorov, conceived of cosmism in his Philosophy of Common Tasks. In short, the project with a common mission is to create the technical, social and conditions for the resurrection of all who have ever lived, so that past and future generations can be reconciled and united. This must be a conscious work of man and not dependent on God's grace. Secular technology was seen as a salvific force that overcame death and fulfilled Christianity's promise of universal salvation. Fedorov firmly believed that the ideal of science and progress was to study "the blind forces that bring hunger, disease and death in order to transform them into life-giving forces."
However, technology will not only overcome time constraints, but also space constraints. All the resurrected life forms cannot be accommodated on the earth, and eventually they will settle in the vast universe. Fedorov wrote: "By resurrecting all the generations that have lived on this earth, consciousness will spread to all worlds of the universe." Later cosmist, main representative of the biocosmist-immortalist party Alexander Sve Atogol went a step further and developed the goal of resurrection into achieving personal immortality. In his 1922 manifesto, he outlined his ambition to conquer both time and space: "The struggle for personal immortality - for survival in the universe - embodies the universal will."
Towards decentralized science and new frontiers
Nikolai Fedorov also reflects on what is needed to realize the cosmist vision social organization. Since science and technology play a key role in achieving immortality, resurrection, and universal salvation, participation in knowledge and research must include everyone. Only in this way can scholars and non-scholars be bridgedThe gap between scholars restores kinship feelings. Applied science can then be directed toward the higher goal of regulating the blind lethal forces of nature. This belief in the power of universal participation in science has parallels with today’s decentralized science (DeSci) movement.
In an era when science was stagnant, DeSci provided the social organization envisioned by Nikolai Fedorov and promised to reinvigorate scientific progress. Today's academic world is ossifying into a "publish or perish" culture that prioritizes quantity over less popular but far-reaching research. Additionally, scientific publishing and peer review systems suffer from opacity and inefficiencies that result in limited data availability and transparency, hampering vital replication studies. In contrast, DeSci plans to use blockchain technology to implement new governance mechanisms, such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), allowing for the democratic participation of a wider range of scientists and investors. The result is that more high-risk, high-reward or unconventional research can be supported under the principles of open access and transparency. Within the DeSci space, DAOs have been formed that focus on far-reaching fields ranging from longevity science to space exploration.
The emergence of parallel institutions driven by decentralized technology, replacing traditional institutions, is part of a larger online movement pioneered by entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan part. In his conception, the Network is a highly coherent online community with the capacity for collective action that can crowdfund territory on a global scale and ultimately gain diplomatic recognition. While Balaji sought to use this concept to reopen physical borders on Earth and rekindle America’s pioneering spirit, we can apply the same digital technology and set our sights on the ultimate frontier: overcoming death and colonizing space. As a global coordinating body, decentralized science will be ideally suited to fostering global networks of human collaboration and new allegiances and commitments to our transcendent goals.
CryoDAO: Beyond death through cryopreservation research
The field of longevity is how DeSci is injecting freshness and A perfect example of a disruptive idea. During the 20th century, human life expectancy increased by several decades due to advances in public health and medicine. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are approaching the limits of current methods and that radical human lifespan extension is not possible if we continue on our current path. In its Longevity Acceleration Roadmap, the Longevity Biotechnology Foundation (LBF) outlines three parallel strategies for achieving unlimited lifespan. The first two are full-body replacement and advanced bioengineering, aiming to completely solve the problem of aging. However, given their uncertainTimetables, biostatics are the key third approach and backup plan. Biostasis is a strategy to buy time, suspending aging indefinitely through cryopreservation, offering the possibility of future resurrection when all other contemporary life extension options have been exhausted.
Due to public perception and other historical reasons, biostatic preservation is an underfunded life-extension strategy, with only a few startups and academic experiments in the field room. The total cost of a whole-body cryopreservation and resuscitation program is approximately $2.4 billion, according to LBF. However, this amount is relatively small compared to the research budget of the pharmaceutical industry. Even a small amount of attention and funding can make significant progress in this area. Against this backdrop, DeSci is well-positioned to attract unconventional funding and talent to achieve breakthroughs in this area that, if realized, could radically extend our lifespans.
Among the decentralized science (DeSci) DAOs, CryoDAO is at the forefront of biological static preservation. Its goal is to contribute to cryopreservation research projects with high potential to improve cryopreservation quality and capabilities, ultimately enabling the future resurrection of humanity. Biostatic preservation faces many challenges, including preservation techniques, methods to assess preservation quality, and future resurrection techniques. The good news is that these are primarily engineering issues and we already have a preliminary roadmap with clearly defined goals and key technical milestones to achieve successful preservation and resurrection. This coherent plan is critical to attracting talent and funding.
CryoDAO raised approximately $3 million in its first funding round in early 2024 and has funded several groundbreaking initiatives. One project aims to use molecular analysis and machine learning to discover safer and more effective cryoprotectants, compounds used to prevent biological tissue from forming ice crystals (vitrification) at extremely low subzero temperatures, thereby preserving cellular structure. Another project hopes to achieve the world's first live birth from vitrified and replanted whole sheep ovaries. This would demonstrate for the first time in history that it is possible to restore complex organs from ultra-low temperature storage to a fully viable state. In December 2024, CryoDAO completed another funding round, raising $900,000 for its ambitious frozen rat project. This project aims to demonstrate the first cryopreservation and recovery of a small mammal (rat). Such systemic resuscitation has not been attempted since the 1960s.
CryoDAO demonstrates how the DeSci movement enables bold and unconventional projects. It also shows that if we set transcendent and ambitious goals, although difficult and time-consuming, scientific progressSteps can still be re-energized and even bring benefits to humanity in the short term. For example, improved cryopreservation methods could increase organ and tissue storage capacity. This will not only benefit thousands of people around the world by increasing transplant opportunities, but also improve tissue engineering, trauma medicine, and basic biomedical research. Additionally, the ability to store large amounts of tissue and cells will facilitate drug discovery, development, and evaluation.
Returning to cosmism, cryopreservation can also help realize another pillar of that philosophy - interstellarism. Currently, manned long-term space travel faces challenges such as limited resources required for normal physiology and metabolism, exposure to interstellar radiation and zero-gravity environments, and psychological stress. Cryobiostasis or cryopreservation can trivialize these limiting factors. In this regard, CryoDAO will join organizations such as NASA and the European Space Agency to explore the feasibility of cryosleep for deep space travel.
The morality of interstellar immortality
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe is always increase, heading irreversibly toward disorder. However, ordered regions still emerge during the process. In his book Until the End of Time, physicist Brian Greene clearly explains how gravity and nuclear forces worked together to give birth to orderly structures like stars and galaxies from the primordial universe, while simultaneously releasing locked-in matter of entropic potential to obey the second law, creating a low-entropy region. Since then, photons released by the sun have been used as a low-entropy, high-quality energy source for life processes and maintaining the orderly structure of living organisms.
Thus, as our knowledge of the universe deepens, we begin to understand that nature is not a blind deadly force, but a force that provides the needs of life. A source of low-entropy fuel. The point of life is to combat the increasing disorder in the universe and preserve regions of order and low entropy. For us, this will be possible through cryopreservation technology. If we can preserve the brain structure of an individual before he or she reaches information-theoretic death, thereby preserving his or her memory, personality, and identity, we may one day be able to resurrect that person using advanced future technologies. This is similar to the museum preservation techniques described by Fedorov in "Museums, Their Meaning and Mission." In his vision, all people who have ever lived should be preserved in museums and resurrected by future generations. As he wrote: "To transfer all the remains of life to a museum is to transfer them to a higher order, to a field of study, to the hands of future generations, to the hands of one or more generations."< /p>
This naturally raises the prospect of intergenerational justice.Going and looking into the future, brought about by the future of long-term preservation and potential resurrection of individuals. As the philosopher Boris Groys pointed out, Fedorov's project of resurrecting the dead was a technology directed toward the past. Previous generations will no longer be excluded from the better society of the future. Therefore, the dead are not exploited for the benefit of the living. One caveat, however, is that resurrection is technically impossible if the brain was not properly preserved initially. After all, perfect reversal of a thermodynamic system is impossible due to entropic barriers. Therefore, resurrecting all previous generations from a less advanced era would be impractical.
A more promising prospect is to turn our attention to the future, aiming to preserve the information integrity of today's individuals and resurrect them using future technologies. In Bainbridge's "Cosmic Order", this biological resurrection system can give people new life. However, a person deserves to be resurrected to new life only by contributing to the development of the cosmic order. Individuals who make extraordinary contributions will win the right to live multiple times on different planets, thereby spreading advanced ideas throughout the galaxy by "the fittest arriving." In this way, "each generation has a moral contract with its descendants." Those alive today will not be sacrificed in favor of those who come after them, because future generations will respect this moral contract if they want those who come after them to do the same.
This prospect of interstellar immortality will greatly deepen and enrich the human experience. We need not fear living indefinitely. In Jorge Luis Borges's short story "The Immortals," infinite time makes the caveman's life dull and rigid because "every action (and every thought) is a past previous action." echo". However, in the context of the universe, people can live a new life in a new world and gain broader and richer experiences and personalities. In his influential paper "Endless Time: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe," theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson provides quantitative proof of how an open universe could provide for ever-expanding life, areas of consciousness and memory. No matter how far into the future we travel, there will always be new things happening and new worlds to explore. If this is correct, we must continue to advance the expansion of our consciousness across time and space.
DeSci is ushering in a revolutionary era in the way science is done, reinvigorating human progress. Now is the time for us to boldly pursue our ambitions. Guided by cosmism, we should work to expand humanity's reach in space and time before civilization descends into a catastrophic trajectory. To borrow a phrase from philosopher and science fiction writer Olaf Stapleton in Starman: "The perfection of the universe and theThere is a race between death, a race between full awakening of cosmic consciousness and eternal sleep. "CryoDAO is firmly advancing the fullness of the universe and the awakening of consciousness. As biocosmist poet Olga Lohr wrote more than a century ago:
i Stab the soul of the blade into death
To rend the darkness of the tomb
God of Death He is a disgusting god
Overturned by the hand of reason!